


bad dreams and soft things

by spacemancharisma



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: (it's not plot relevant he just is), Autistic Benrey (Half-Life), Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Roommates, benrey has ptsd, blanket fort :), hell yeah, so does Gordon but that's less relevant lol, this is my first fic with these characters so please excuse my ooc lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27514261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemancharisma/pseuds/spacemancharisma
Summary: “soft…” he murmured to himself. That’s what he had never had at Black Mesa. Everything was concrete or white tile or stainless steel and nothing was soft. “need soft…”
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 19
Kudos: 331





	bad dreams and soft things

**Author's Note:**

> tw for very vague and brief mentions of benrey having been experimented on at black mesa

Benrey woke up drenched in his own sweat and surrounded on all sides by his own bright white Sweet Voice, his throat still tightly holding one long, panicked note. He was breathing frantically as both of his hearts hammered like a prey animal on the run. Eyes blinked in and out of existence uncontrollably in a halo around his head. His hands had stretched into oily claws in his sleep, and he found himself digging them into the pale skin of his arms. It took him a moment to get himself under control, but once he had a human shape back and the Sweet Voice had mostly dissipated, he began the ritual of running his shaking hands down his body, checking for old scars and new wounds. By the time he had traced over the last white line down his ankle and found himself as unharmed as could be expected, his breathing was no longer threatening to send him unconscious, and his chest no longer ached with the pounding of his hearts. 

He popped his lips quietly as he thought about what to do next, enjoying the soothing repetition of the sound. In theory, he could go across the hall and wake Gordon. The idea was almost painfully appealing, quickly spiraling into a fantasy of being gently held to Gordon’s soft, strong nerd chest by one soft, strong nerd arm, his soft, strong nerd hand carding carefully through Benrey’s feral-looking mane of hair as he hummed the same songs he sang to his son after a bad dream. Benrey blinked away the nice thoughts with the nice feelings that came along with them; as much as he would love nothing more than to crawl into Gordon’s bed and curl up tiny against the warm shape of his body, that was “too forward” according to Tommy, and would disrupt his carefully curated and well-researched plans to woo him. 

Benrey came to out of his reverie and found one of his hands rubbing his shirt along his sternum. The self-soothing gesture was not unfamiliar, but it did give him a good idea. 

“soft…” he murmured to himself. That’s what he had never had at Black Mesa. Everything was concrete or white tile or stainless steel and nothing was soft. “need soft…” 

Slowly and still a bit dizzily, he slid out of bed, Gordon’s old t-shirt pooling around his knees. He gathered up the blanket he had been sleeping with and dragged it to the living room, looking like nothing so much as a disheveled and oversized toddler as the moonlight hit him from the windows. He spread the blanket out on the floor and then nodded, satisfied with the first step of his work. He pulled a couple of his favorite pillows down off of the couch and added them to what was rapidly taking shape into a pile of every particularly soft thing in the house. 

With a plan slowly crystalizing in his sleep-fuzzy brain, he returned to his bedroom to collect his other blanket and a few of Gordon’s hoodies that he had stolen. He also had the wherewithal to grab his chullo off of the dresser and pull it tight down over his ears. He felt a little safer even just with that. 

He delivered his newly collected items to the living room hoard, then paused to buffer for a moment. Where else in the house would the nice, soft things live? 

_ Joshua’s room. _ Kids love soft things. Benrey love soft things. Perfect combination, and even better, Josh was at his other dad’s place for the week, so there would be no one to miss the armful of stuffed animals that Benrey squirreled away to his nest. 

At this point, Benrey had entered a kind of obsessive frenzy, though it was dulled slightly by the haze of sleep and three A.M. He wasn’t really thinking anymore, he was just running on the thought that had warped to superstition in the part of his brain where he kept all the trauma:  _ the only way to know for sure that you aren’t still in Black Mesa is to build a space for yourself that has nothing in common with it _ . And in his drowsy, still-slightly-panicked mind, that meant making for himself as big a nest as possible with the softest things at his disposal.

So, after taking a moment to run his hands over his collection as it stood, he slipped back to the hall closet. 

\--

Gordon woke up already confused, which wasn’t necessarily unusual for him, but this time his only confusion was as to why he was even awake. It was solidly the middle of the night, his phone wasn’t ringing, his arm wasn’t hurting, Josh wasn’t over to wake him up, and he didn’t need to pee, so what was he doing? 

Then he heard the rustling. 

Through the far wall of his bedroom, there was a distinct shuffling and scraping noise that took him a moment to identify as someone rifling around in the hall closet. With a furrowed brow, he fumbled for his glasses and checked his phone for the time. 3:27,  _ what the hell? _

He didn’t bother to pick a shirt up off the ground as he lurched to the door, still more than half asleep. He was running a hand through the roots of his hair and halfway through a yawn when he opened the door and found two huge, glowing eyes staring at him out of the darkness.

“Benrey?” his voice was rough and scraped up the sides of his throat as his eyes adjusted to see the other man on tiptoes, reaching as high as his short legs could take him to grab something off the top shelf. 

Benrey squeaked slightly at being caught, and in a moment of almost cartoonishly perfect comedic timing, collapsed under the sudden weight of all of Gordon’s extra blankets falling on top of him. 

He hit the ground with a rush of air leaving his lungs, and Gordon fell almost into hysterics at the sight of just three faint and sluggish orbs of pale yellow Sweet Voice leaking out between folds of fabric. 

Still laughing between words, Gordon began to unravel him. “Come on man, it’s the middle of the night, what are you even doing?”

With just his head poking out from the pile of blankets, Benrey looked unbearably small and ( _ goddammit _ ) adorable as he offered, “..... need soft.” 

Gordon pulled a confused face but continued to focus on untangling his roommate from the gordian knot of bedding he had trapped himself in. Benrey shivered all over when Gordon began brushing his hair back into place before pulling the chullo back on and knocking it playfully over his eyes. Benrey righted his hat and felt his hearts jump out of sync with one another when he opened his eyes to see Gordon offering his hand and smiling down at him. He took Gordon’s hand and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, trailing about twenty pounds of blankets over his shoulders. 

“You, uh… wanna explain that?” Gordon asked once Benrey was back upright, and Benrey shrugged and gestured for Gordon to follow as he shuffled back to the living room. 

Benrey threw himself and his new additions atop the pile he had already made, and rapidly began to cover himself on all sides with his collection. He rubbed his face like a cat against a particularly fluffy plush toy of Joshua’s, and Gordon felt his face melt into a fond smile. 

“Okay, so I think I see what you’ve done here, but would you mind telling me  _ why _ ? And why this had to happen in the  _ middle of the goddamn night _ ?” There was no heat in his words and Benrey knew that. They were the verbal equivalent of ruffling his hair and Benrey leaned into the gruff affection. 

“uh…….. bad dream, cringe shit.”

“Oh... I’m sorry man, that’s the worst,” Gordon plopped himself down next to Benrey and pulled an extra corner of one blanket over his head in solidarity. “You wanna talk about it?” 

Benrey felt his fingernails start to come to a point again as his hearts sped up and the “nah man, don’t, don’t worry ‘bout it, go on back to sleeping cause your fail human body’ll die or whatever if you don’t” was at the tip of his tongue, but when he opened his mouth, what came out instead was a couple dim Sweet Voice bubbles and a rush of, “so ok I might not have actually ever really been a security guard for mesa technically.” 

And then it was everything, it was popping into existence on a new planet without explanation, all alone, and it was being immediately snatched and carried away and locked up and chained down, and it was scientists looming over him for days at a time until that got boring, and then it was gas in his lungs and cold metal on his skin until they decided he wasn’t really worth the gas anyway and then it was just crying so quietly as thick, inky black Sweet Voice leaked out of his mouth and he tried not to look at his own blood pooling around him as they realized he wouldn’t really die, and it was the clinical way they always talked about him, like he wasn’t in the room, like he wasn’t any more a person than the headcrabs were, like he didn’t  _ know _ , he always knew, of course he did, and it was the cold, hard concrete and the cold, hard tile and the cold, hard steel and that’s why he needed all the soft, because there was never any soft, never any warm, not for him, and he just needed to know that things were different now, he needed to be sure, he needed it to be soft.

When he finally snapped his jaws shut, he realized that at some point he had started crying, and a few small white orbs were illuminating the room. And then he realized that at some point Gordon had started crying too, and that was no good at all.  _ And then _ he realized that probably around the same point, Gordon had reached out and taken his hand and slowly pulled him down to rest against his chest, and he was still running one large, warm thumb against the back of Benrey’s hand and Benrey was still melting into the heavy warmth of the strong, soft nerd arm around his shoulders. 

“sorry,” he muttered, trying to do any type of cleanup on the massive spill of unpleasant emotions he had just knocked over. “not uh…….. not super cool and epic to wake you up in the middle of the night…. top ten benrey bad roommate moments.”

“No, no,” Gordon was far too quick on the draw with comforting him. “It’s okay, dude. God, I’m… I’m so sorry, like.. I’m sorry I never realized and I’m just so sorry that happened,” he pulled Benrey a little tighter to him and his eyes fogged over a little as his voice grew quieter. “That should never have happened to you…” 

Benrey squirmed a little under the attention. “it’s cool man, it’s whatever, y’know, all in the past and that shit.” 

“No, man, I-” Gordon sounded almost frustrated as he tried to put his thoughts together, but he kept his voice gentle, like he was trying not to spook a wild animal. 

When he spoke again, his voice was steady. “That’s never gonna happen to you again, you know that, yeah?”

Benrey’s body twitched in some half-hearted combination of a nod and a shrug. Sure, yeah, Black Mesa got blown to shit and all that good jazz, but he was still living as an alien on earth, and not very good at hiding it, and there were still all other sorts of labs and agencies out there, and he had seen enough movies to know-

“No, seriously dude, this is me swearing to you,” Gordon reached out with his hand to turn Benrey gently by his chin to face him. Benrey felt his breath stutter at the gesture, and then even more so when he found himself pinned like a butterfly under the agonizing sincerity of Gordon’s gaze.

There was a distant rumbling rage under his voice as he continued, but Benrey felt it settle over him like a shield, like the blankets he had wrapped around himself. He was safe under that fury, it wasn’t for him. 

“That’s never going to happen again. I won’t let it, okay? You live in  _ my _ house, okay, nothing’s going to happen to you, you’re m-” Gordon swallowed the rest of that thought and blinked quickly, and Benrey felt his brain spinning as he did his best not to get too lost in the fantasy of what he had meant to say. 

“You’re safe here, okay? That’s all I really mean. Like, you’re kind of an asshole sometimes and so am I, but I care about you and I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You aren’t alone here.” 

Benrey was shaking all over and a handful of small pink bubbles slipped past his lips, and Gordon smiled softly as he leaned down to press a small kiss to his forehead. Benrey let out a squeak very similar to the one he had made when the blankets had all fallen on him, and turned his face up to Gordon’s, shifting the blanket over their heads. 

“kisses? kisses for benrey?” Gordon chuckled softly at Benrey’s wide eyes as they cast the only light inside their little fort, his hands wrapping into the leg of Gordon’s pajama pants and pulling gently. “you still owe me from outside mesa, you said i could get one later and you never paid up, c’mon, kisses for benny, friend?” 

Gordon hadn’t finished laughing when he pressed another small kiss to Benrey’s forehead, then one to his temple, then one right on the tip of his nose just to make his cheeks glow with a strange mix of red and blue blush. 

Benrey turned his eyes up to meet Gordon’s, his hearts racing again. Surely that was a go-ahead, right? It wouldn’t be too sudden, like Tommy told him it was last time. Gordon had started it, too. Right? 

Slowly, swallowing back bubblegum-flavored Sweet Voice, Benrey asked in his smallest voice, “real kisses please?” 

Gordon sucked in a breath too fast and choked on it a little. His face was on fire and he couldn’t believe what was happening. Sure, Benrey was a flirt, but he was just like that, it was all a joke to him. Unless… it wasn’t? And right now he was clearly being as sincere as it was possible for him to be, Gordon distantly wondered if it maybe hurt him somehow to be so honest. 

“Are you sure? Like, not as a joke, yeah?”

Benrey nodded his head violently enough to knock his hat sideways, and he righted it to say, “yes, yes, very much sure, benrey would like kisses, yes please, gordon boyfriendman please.” 

Gordon couldn’t help smiling past the frantic turning of his stomach at the familiar and somehow comforting sound of Benrey’s nonsensical rambling. “Gordon Boyfriendman?”

Benrey’s voice was once again very small. “yes please.”

Gordon hummed for a moment, just for the bit, then said, “Yeah, I think that would work for me.”

He had just enough time to see Benrey’s eyes light up (both figuratively  _ and _ literally) before he leaned down the inches distance to press their lips together. 

Benrey felt the blankets shifting over him, closing them even more in the warm darkness, but that was barely even at the back of his mind. 

_ holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit.  _

His head was absolutely spinning and he was trying his best to focus on every detail of Gordon’s hand around the back of his neck, Gordon’s hair brushing against his face, and,  _ god _ , Gordon’s  _ lips _ ?? On  _ his lips _ ??  _ Kissing him _ ???  _ Kissing Benrey???  _ He brought his hands up to tangle through Gordon’s hair, fluffy from sleep, and thought he might black out from the feeling.  _ Soft, soft, soft, perfect. _ Benrey whined and hot pink Sweet Voice bubbled out past the corner of his lips, and he felt Gordon huff a laugh into his mouth, and,  _ no, seriously, he was going to pass out _ . 

After a little while, the feeling of Gordon’s hand heavy on his waist and Gordon’s mouth moving against his became just barely too much and Benrey felt himself start to blur at the edges, so reluctantly, he pulled away, but found himself caught in the gravity of the human warmth of Gordon’s body, and he fell forward and smacked his forehead into Gordon’s chest. Once again, he felt the rumbling of Gordon’s fond laughter rattle through his bones and he couldn’t help thinking that it wouldn’t be too terrible to die like this, permanently, y’know? 

Gordon slung his arm around Benrey’s waist and loudly smooched the top of his head before yawning noisily. 

“Jesus, dude, it’s like four A.M., what are we still doing out here?”

Benrey grumbled and whined and buried himself deeper into Gordon’s chest. 

“Oh, what, you gonna tell me you’re not tired? Because I absolutely will not believe you.”

Benrey muttered into his chest before removing his face to mumble, “don’t want you to leave, bro.....”

Gordon was too tired to come up with a dig or carry on the bit, so instead he just said very softly, “You can come with me if you want.”

Benrey couldn’t keep the smile away but he still poked fun, “oh, uh, inviting me to sleep with you, huh? gordon uhhh gordon…. feetman likes to move fast, huh? … gordon fastman and shit.”

“Oh, shut up,” Gordon’s face was burning pleasantly as he knocked Benrey with his shoulder. “You know what I mean, and I can still send you back to your own room if I want.”

“yeah yeah sure,” Benrey let Gordon pull him to his feet and he scooped up his favorites of the blankets and pillows to carry them with him. Gordon mused to himself that he looked like a little kid heading to their first sleepover. He realized that this probably was. Benrey’s first sleepover, that is. He was washed over by memories of what Benrey had shared with him about his life, the isolation and fear and pain, and he reached down to wrap his hand tightly around Benrey’s as they walked. 

As soon as he was back in his own bedroom, the exhaustion of being awake hit Gordon full force, and it was with great relief that he set his glasses back on his bedside table and collapsed onto his bed. He waited a moment then looked up to the blurry figure of Benrey standing nearby, fiddling with the hem of his (stolen) t-shirt. “Hey, come on,” he opened his arms and gestured to the open space next to him. 

Benrey moved slowly, unsure, but once he had settled under the covers he wasted no time in pressing himself as close to Gordon’s chest as he could manage, his arms winding tight around his waist and tangling their legs together. He hummed pleasantly and soft blue and pink Sweet Voice spilled into the darkness. 

Gordon felt his lips turn up as little bubbles of cotton candy Sweet Voice popped against his bare chest. He gently removed Benrey’s chullo and pressed a series of kisses into his tangle of dark hair. 

“I love you too, man.”

Benrey felt himself melt against Gordon as a soft, strong nerd arm held him close, and he rubbed his cheek against the smooth skin he pressed himself ever tighter to. 

_ Yes, good, perfect. Soft. _


End file.
